What are the best ways to design a choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

Choice architecture is the way that options are presented to people, and it can influence their decisions and behaviors. In this article, you will learn some of the best ways to design a choice architecture for healthy behaviors, based on insights from behavioral economics. You will also discover some examples of how choice architecture can be applied to various domains, such as health, finance, and environment.

1 What is behavioral economics?

Behavioral economics is a branch of economics that studies how people make decisions and act in real-life situations, often deviating from the rational models of traditional economics. Behavioral economists use insights from psychology, neuroscience, and sociology to understand why people behave the way they do, and how they can be nudged to make better choices for themselves and society.

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Michael Saracino

Associate Advisor for Golden Rule Financial at Manulife Wealth
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Behavioral economics is a field of study that merges insights from psychology with economic theory to explore how people make decisions in the real world, acknowledging that they may not always act rationally due to cognitive biases, emotions, and social influences. It challenges traditional economic assumptions of rational decision-making, highlighting how individuals often use shortcuts or 'heuristics' to make choices, which can lead to systematic deviations from what classical economics would predict. By understanding these behaviors, behavioral economics aims to improve economic models, policy-making, and consumer welfare, providing a more accurate representation of human decision-making processes.

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Melissa Frater MS.

Adaptable | Gritty | Resilient Leader
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Designing a choice architecture for healthy behaviors involves structuring environments to nudge individuals towards healthier decisions without restricting freedom of choice. Key strategies include: simplifying information to make healthy choices more understandable, using defaults to make the healthier option the automatic choice, providing social proof through highlighting popular healthy behaviors, utilizing prompts and reminders to encourage healthy actions, and offering immediate rewards for healthy choices. Tailoring these strategies to the target population's preferences and the specific context can significantly enhance their effectiveness in promoting sustained healthy behaviors.

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2 What is choice architecture?

Choice architecture is the term coined by behavioral economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein to describe the design of the environment in which people make choices. Choice architecture includes the number, order, format, and framing of the options, as well as the default settings, feedback mechanisms, and incentives that affect the decision-making process. Choice architecture can have a significant impact on people's behaviors, often without them being aware of it.

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Aditya Mathur

Finance Enthusiast | Ex-Intern @ SMBC | UN Millenium Fellow'23
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"The insight that everything matters can be both paralyzing and empowering" perfectly sums up the crucial role of a choice architect. Choice Architecture is the process of organizing the context in which people make decisions and many real people turn out to be choice architects. Be it a doctor prescribing alternative treatments to a patient or the ballot voters use to choose candidates or even a parent describing possible educational options to a kid: all influence people's decisions, set up in the right context.

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3 What are the principles of choice architecture?

Thaler and Sunstein proposed six principles of choice architecture that can help design effective nudges for healthy behaviors. These include incentivizing decision-makers to align with their goals and social welfare, making it easy for people to understand the consequences of their choices and the trade-offs involved, setting default options to the most beneficial or desirable for most people, providing timely and relevant feedback on people's choices and outcomes, anticipating and minimizing the effects of human errors, biases, and heuristics on decision-making, and simplifying and organizing the choice set while offering guidance and support for complex decisions.

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4 What are some examples of choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

Choice architecture can be applied to various domains where people face choices that affect their health and well-being, such as health, finance, and environment. In the health domain, choice architecture can help people adopt healthier habits, like eating more fruits and vegetables or exercising regularly, by placing healthier foods at eye level, offering smaller portions, displaying calorie information, making gym memberships automatic, or sending reminders and rewards. In the finance domain, choice architecture can help people improve their financial literacy, save more, invest wisely, or avoid debt by enrolling them in retirement plans by default, offering matching contributions, simplifying financial products, providing financial education, or sending nudges and alerts. Lastly, in the environment domain, choice architecture can help people reduce their environmental impact by setting energy-efficient appliances as the default, showing social norms and comparisons, providing green labels and certifications, charging fees for plastic bags, or offering discounts and rewards.

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5 How to design a choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

Designing a choice architecture for healthy behaviors requires identifying the target behavior and desired outcome, analyzing the decision context and barriers, selecting the appropriate nudges and testing them, and implementing and monitoring the choice architecture. To do this, you need to consider what people should do, why they should do it, the current options, defaults, incentives, and feedback, as well as how to influence the decision-making process based on choice architecture principles. Additionally, you need to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the nudges, scale up and sustain the choice architecture, and ensure its ethical and legal compliance.

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Guru David

Private Psychotherapy and Human Behaviour Consultancy in the Midlands
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Just because someone is capable of asking a question, it does not mean that the question is correct or relevant. In my view, this is all nonsence. Human behaviours, the Human Brain and the Human Mind simply do not work this way. All Human Behaviours are a confluence process which is the product of factors from the environment, the brain, mind, body and habits. These are governed by Natures Fractals. One way to understand this is to understand this: The Whole is greater than the Sum of its Parts; the Nature of the Whole can be changed and influenced as we change the Nature and influences of the Parts that form the Sum. This process is applied by Nature across the Natural world and in reality, it is the foundation for all therapies.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What are the best ways to design a choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

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1 What is behavioral economics?

2 What is choice architecture?

3 What are the principles of choice architecture?

4 What are some examples of choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

5 How to design a choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

6 Here’s what else to consider

Economics

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What are the best ways to design a choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

1

2

3

4

5

6

1 What is behavioral economics?

2 What is choice architecture?

3 What are the principles of choice architecture?

4 What are some examples of choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

5 How to design a choice architecture for healthy behaviors?

6 Here’s what else to consider

Economics

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